Friday briefing: Loon to provide aerial internet in Kenya

Alphabet's Loon will be providing balloon network infrastructure to Telkom Kenya, a government report highlights security issues with Huawei hardware, a refugee aid charity has rejected a donation from US government contractor Salesforce

Your WIRED daily briefing. Today, Alphabet's Loon will be providing balloon network infrastructure to Telkom Kenya, a government report has highlighted potential security issues with Huawei network hardware, a charity aiding refugees in the US has rejected a donation from Salesforce due to the company's government contracts and more.

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Alphabet's Loon will operate a network of solar-powered balloons to provide 4G mobile broadband in remote areas of Kenya (BBC News). The company's first commercial contract since it became a fully-fledged Alphabet subsidiary earlier this month, the deal with Telkom Kenya will provide internet access to people in a 5,000 square kilometre region of the country that can't be reached by existing network infrastructure. While critics have warned that this single-provider project could create a monopoly that could cause problems in the future, Kenyan information, communication and technology minister Joe Mucheru told Reuters that the project would aid connectivity in rural areas and "see almost every part of the country covered".

A new government report says that infrastructure telecoms hardware provider Huawei must address shortcomings in its production processes to remediate the potential for "risks in the UK telecommunications networks" (ZDNet). The report highlighted issues with third-party software used in some of the Chinese network hardware giant's products, specifically that the binaries installed on Huawei hardware used in UK telecoms networks did not match the binary that could be built from reference source code. However, the overall tone of the report was positive, saying that "it is evident that HCSEC (Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre) continues to provide unique, world-class cybersecurity expertise and technical assurance of sufficient scope and quality as to be appropriate for the current stage in the assurance framework around Huawei in the UK."

US aid charity RAICES (the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services) had turned down a $250,000 donation from cloud services provider Salesforce because the company provides services to US government agencies involved in the illegal detention and separation of migrant children (Gizmodo). In an attempt to soothe complaints from its workers and other customers over its contracts with US Customs and Border Protection services, Salesforce pledged to donate a total $1 million to organisations helping families separated at the US border. However, as RAICES points out in a letter to the firm: "When it comes to supporting oppressive, inhumane, and illegal policies, we want to be clear: the only right action is to stop. The software and technical services you provide to CBP form part of the foundation that helps ICE operate efficiently, from recruiting more officers to managing vendors. "

University of Glasgow chemistry professor Lee Cronin and his team have trained a robot to discover new molecules (WIRED). Their paper in the journal Nature describes how, after the initial training, the robot ran simulations — without any chemical data — to predict which chemical combinations were more reactive and then predicted the reactivity of approximately 1,000 chemical reactions with an accuracy of 86 per cent. “What the robot allows us to do is basically make these most reactive discoveries many times faster,” Cronin says. “If this robot gives us nothing else what we’re able to do is cut down the workload of the chemist by 90 per cent.”

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The BBC has revealed the first full trailer for series 11 of Doctor Who (The Verge). The forthcoming series will be Jodie Whittaker’s first appearance as Thirteenth Doctor, but the trailer focusses on her new companions Graham (Bradley Walsh), Yasmin (Mandip Gill) and Ryan (Tosin Cole). We don't have an air date yet, but the series is expected to come to our screens in October.

Uta Frith doesn’t want to meet Donald Trump. “There would be no point in my saying anything to him,” she says. “Mostly, when scientists give advice to politicians, politicians listen only to the things they want to hear.” Frith, a developmental psychologist who works at University College London, should know. Not only has she been a pioneer in the study of dyslexia and autism — in the 1960s, she was one of the first researchers in the UK to study Asperger's Syndrome — but she has also been working to advance the interests of women in science for decades.

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